We are still waiting to hear more about the new Nvidia Ion 2. But in the mean time Nvidia have just announced their new Ion LE chipset.

The Nvidia Ion 2 chipset / graphics have been specifically designed for netbooks and nettops, and is identical to the original ION, except it only supports DirectX 9, as opposed to DirectX 10.

The idea is to lower costs, and aim the Ion LE at netbooks and nettops using Windows XP. Most netbooks on the market still use Windows XP, so it makes sense to lower the costs by removing something that is not needed. But the new Ion LE won’t be able to run Windows 7 acceleration, as it requires DirectX 10.

The Ion LE platform will still provide video acceleration to media such as Blu-ray, making the Nvidia Ion LE still ideal for HTPCs.